Ingalik
, from the Russian via an Inuit word for "Indian." The name has been loosely used to include such culturally related—but separate—tribes as Koyukon, Tanana, and Han. Their self-designation is Deg Hit’an, "People from Here." They were heavily influenced by their Yup’ik neighbors.
Location The Ingalik shared eastern parts of their traditional territory—the banks of the Anvik, Innoko, Kuskokwim, Holitna, and lower Yukon Rivers—with the Kuskowagamiut Inuit. The land consists of river valleys as well as forest and tundra. The Holikachuk, a related though distinct people, lived to their north.
Population There were between 1,000 and 1,500 Ingalik in the nineteenth century. Population in the early 1990s was roughly 650.
Language Ingaliks speak a northern Athapaskan language. However, by the later twentieth century most Kuskokwim Ingalik spoke the language of their Kuskowagamiut Inuit relatives.
Historical Information
History The people probably originated in Canada. They were driven west by the Cree to settle in present-day Alaska around 1200. They encountered Russian explorers in 1833. A trade post was constructed either around then or in 1867. There were Russian Orthodox missionaries in the region during that period. The major epidemics began in 1838-1839.
Steamboats began operating on the Yukon, expanding the fur trade, beginning in about 1867, the year the United States took possession of Alaska. Catholic and Anglican missionaries arrived in the 1880s and soon opened boarding schools. The caribou disappeared in the 1870s, leading to even more fishing and closer ties with the Kuskowagamiut Inuit. Non-natives flooded into the region during the Yukon gold rush of the late 1890s. Most Ingaliks had accepted Christianity by the mid-twentieth century.
Religion Everything, animate or inanimate, was thought to have had spirits. The Ingalik universe consisted of four levels, one higher and two lower than earth. Spirits of the dead might travel to any of the levels, depending on the method of death. A creator, spirits associated with nature, and various spiritual and superhuman beings, as well as people, inhabited the four worlds.
Most ceremonies were designed to maintain equilibrium with the spirit world. They included the two- to three-week Animals ceremony, the Bladder ceremony, the Doll ceremony, and four potlatch-type events with other villages. The single-village Bladder and Doll ceremonies involved paying respects to animal spirits and learning the future. Of the potlatch ceremonies, the Midwinter Death potlatch was the most solemn. The purpose was to honor a dead relative, usually a father, to gain status, and to maintain reciprocal giving arrangements with other families. Accompanying this ceremony was the so-called Hot Dance, a night of revelry.
The feast of the animals, involving songs, dances, costumes, and masks, was most important. Major roles were inherited. It involved a ritual enactment of hunting and fishing, with a clown providing comic relief. Other, more minor, ceremonies involved sharing food and occurred at life-cycle events and on occasions such as eclipses.
Songs, or spells, helped keep the human, animal, and spiritual worlds in harmony. They could be purchased from older people. Songs were also associated with amulets, which could be bought, inherited, or made. Male and female shamans were said to have more powerful souls than other people.
They acquired their powers through animal dream visions. Shamans’ powerful songs, or spells, could be used for good or evil.
Government Each of four geographical groups contained at least one village that included a defined territory and a chief.
Customs Society was divided into ranked status groups or social classes known as wealthy, common people, and idlers. People in the first group were expected to be generous with their surpluses and did hold potlatches as a redistributive method. Members could lead ceremonies. The idlers were considered virtually unmarriageable; however, the classes tended to be fluid and were noninherited. Wealth consisted mostly of fish but also of items such as furs, meat, and any particularly well-wrought item, such as a carved bowl, a canoe, or a drum.
Ingaliks often intermarried with, and borrowed culturally from, the nearby Inuit. Marriage depended in part on the ability of the man to perform bride service. With a first wife’s permission, a wealthy man might have two wives. Both parents observed food and behavioral restrictions for at least three weeks following a birth. Young women endured segregation for a year at the onset of adolescence, during which time they mastered all the traditionally female tasks.
Punishments for inappropriate social behavior, such as theft, included banishment or death. This was a group decision, on the part of the men and older women, whereas murder required individual blood revenge. Corpses were placed in wooden coffins and buried in the ground or in vaults. Cremation was practiced on rare occasions. Personal property was disposed of. Following funerals, the people observed a 20-day mourning period and often held memorial potlatches.
Dwellings Ingaliks maintained summer and winter villages as well as canoe or spring camps. The winter dwelling was dome shaped and covered with earth and grass. Partially underground, it housed from one to three nuclear families. Ten to 12 such houses made up a winter village. Men used a larger, rectangular, semisubterranean communal house for sleeping, eating, working, sweating, and conducting ceremonies. This "kashim" was adapted from their Yup’ik neighbors. Canoe and sled racks were placed in front of houses.
Canoe camps, containing cone-shaped spruce-pole and bough shelters, were built while people went in search of fresh fish. Summer houses were built of spruce plank, spruce bark, or cottonwood logs. There were also gabled-roof smoke houses and fish-drying racks. Temporary brush houses were located away from the village.
Diet Among most groups, fish were the most important part of the diet. Species included lamprey eels, caught under ice, as well as salmon, trout, whitefish, pike, and blackfish. The people also ate a variety of large and small animals. Caribou, hunted by communal surround, were the most important. Others included moose, bear, sheep, and numerous fur-bearing animals, especially hare.
Ingaliks also ate birds, mainly waterfowl, and their eggs, as well as berries and other plant foods. "Ice cream," a mixture of cottonwood pods, oil, snow, and berries, was eaten ceremonially and with some restrictions on who could receive it from whom. Food was generally cached in logs on posts.
Key Technology Hunting equipment included bows and arrows, spears, deadfalls, and snares. Fish were taken using a variety of nets, spears, traps, and hook (bone) and line (sinew). Stone tools included axes and wedges. The Ingalik made stone, horn, and wood knives, wooden bowls, and pottery as well as sewn birch-bark and twined grass and willow-bark baskets.
These Ingalik men are ice-fishing with a woven willow trap, which has vertical poles to submerge the rig and meshwork to obstruct the fish and force them deeper into the funnel leading to the trap.
Trade The Ingalik did not trade extensively because they possessed rich natural resources. When they did exchange goods, it was mostly with Inuit groups, exporting wooden bowls, wolverine skins, and furs for seal products and caribou hides. They might also trade furs, wolverine skins, spruce gum, and birch-bark canoes for fish products and dentalia.
Notable Arts Hide and birch baskets were probably this group’s most important material artistic achievement.
Transportation Ingaliks moved around in birch-bark canoes and on sleds and snowshoes.
Dress Most clothing was made from squirrel and other skins. Shirts and pants were common. as were parkas. Women’s moccasins were attached to their pants; the men’s were separate. Personal adornment included dentalium earrings and nose and neck decorations.
War and Weapons The Ingalik were a relatively peaceful people. When they did fight, their enemies included most neighboring tribes, especially the Koyukon and other Athapaskan tribes.
Contemporary Information
Government/Reservations Contemporary villages include Anvik, Holy Cross, and Shageluk.
Economy Most people still engage in traditional subsistence activities, supplemented with some wage work as fishing and hunting guides. There is also some government, seasonal, and utility work.
Legal Status Doyon, Inc., is the legal entity representing Ingalik villages in the ANCSA.
Daily Life For most people, life still revolves around the seasons. Frame or log houses have replaced traditional structures. Although many people struggle with a number of social problems related to high unemployment and cultural upheaval, and the people retain little aboriginal culture, traditional values remain palpable among the Ingalik.
